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Why we protest?
'1. TTIP removes Democracy' In TTIP you will not find any sections where it explicitely says "classify all your social standards down drastically ! " or "Open your grocery stores for chlorine chicken and Monsanto GM maize !" - But indirectly TTIP has exactly that result by CHANGING THE RULES OF THE MARKETS: TTIP is designed as a "living agreement" , which means that new laws before they ever get into Parliament, first are checked whether they are comfortable enough for the markets ; The effect of the isds in TTIP is, that if a major corporation of country A feels, that it has a loss of profit in country B because of country B's state regulation compared to country A's state regulation - maybe country B has a ban of fracking or regulation of financial markets, whereas country A has not, or country B has higher consumer protection than country A - then the major corporation can sue country B in front of an arbitral tribunal; such lawsuits are known in the context of NAFTA, done in secret and to 70% end so that the major corporation wins the case; then the loser state has to pay huge amounts of money to the winning major corporation; all at tax payers cost, of course. isds also leads to a 'chilling effect'; governments don't dare to make citizen friendly laws because of fear to be sued by major corporations then. In such an environment legislation in favor of the people has no chance in the medium term ; then there can be no talk of sovereignty of the people, but of domination of corporations. '2. TTIP undermines basic rights' TTIP leads to limitation of civil rights and liberties and private use of the internet; regarding that it's 1:1 just the same as ACTA. '3. TTIP is developped within an intransparent and lobby influenced process' '4. A paradigm change is needed' • Understandings must be designed only for strenghening our social standards and for making copyright and patent law socially balanced; and that within a transparent, democratic process • We demand instant publication off all table documents, which were put on the negotiation table – nothing speaks against this; the EU, the USA, the industry lobbyists at the negotiation rounds, they all know the content of the table documents, everyone knows except the public '5. The confrontation line is not USA VS EU, but the people VS major corporations' Another version Why you should protest TTIP? We all were so cheerful when two years ago the European Parliament rejected ACTA, but the lobby machine never rests. The big corporations will use all opportunities to slip the same provisions into any international treaty that our governments sign. It is probably true that in the past international treaties were never negotiated in the open, it used to be technically impossible, but now we have the internet. It is true that negotiation tactics requires that not everything is revealed upfront to the adversary. But documents that have already been exchanged between the sides are not secret to any of the sides - so why they are secret to us? The leaks from the negotiations don't make us any less anxious. For example the latest one reads like European corporations want this and that, in exchange the USA corporations would like to get that and that, but what kind of exchange is that? When the USA government grants broadcaster additional rights it reduces the freedom of its every other citizen and business. When Europe agrees for protection of medical trials data it would restrict the freedom of all its citizen to use that data. It is not that the European companies would bear the cost of the privileges that the USA companies get and it is not that the USA companies bear the cost of the European companies privileges. It would be the societies as a whole that would bear the cost and the companies would only get the benefits. The negotiators are government representatives - but the conflict of interests is not between the governments - but between the corporations and the citizens. We are afraid that the governments are keen to grant privileges to companies from abroad in exchange for privileges for their domestic companies forgetting about the costs to the societies on both sides of the Atlantic. In particular we are afraid that: * the 'free flow of data' between USA and Europe will mean a way to get around our privacy rights * the treaty will grant additional copyright related monopolies (like broadcaster rights or protection of medical trial data or protection of fashion design) * it will make all existing intellectual monopolies even harder to reform - because any change would require a change in an international treaty * ISDS mechanism will add additional mechanisms to pressure countries for stricter intellectual monopoly protection * ISDS can block countries from requiring Free Software licenses in public procurement We do not want to be brought against the wall. The TTIP treaty might have many beneficiary parts - we want to know it in time to propose amendments and not be left with only two options: accept it or reject. ACTA failed because people fought against it. We must do it again.